Black Gate

The Story of Southern Islet is a feature film from Malaysia written and directed by Chong Keat Aun, an autobiographical tale of gods and curses set in 1987 — “based on a true childhood story,” we’re told at the start. In the Malaysian state of Kedah, a farmer named Cheong (Season Chee) works in the shadow of the imposing Mount Keriang. When he falls ill after a quarrel with a neighbour, his wife Yan (Jojo Goh) must find out what’s happened to him and try to find a cure. Although profoundly secular as the movie starts, she eventually has to accept that her husband has offended a god. But this is a part of the world where Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and many other religions have crossed paths for centuries; so before curing him Yan has to work out which god, exactly, her husband’s offended.

This is an intriguing premise, and it’s developed well if at a deliberate pace. There’s a certain kind of slow cinema I’ve seen from Southeast Asia over the last few years (perhaps deriving from the work of Apichatpong Weerasethakul), combining long takes and pared-back dialogue with a story that involves a kind of mythic reality. Examples from past Fantasias might include 2017’s Town In A Lake and 2019’s Mystery of the Night. The Story of Southern Islet is stylistically in that tradition, but is a trifle lighter in tone.

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One of the nice things about a film festival is seeing a programme of shorter films that work as a whole — pieces not intended to be complementary that happen to come along at the same time and build on each others’ themes. I have to think it takes a good critical eye for a festival programmer to notice which films speak to each other out of the many submissions they get. It’s worth praising that discernment when a bundle of shorter movies succeed in forming a coherent collective, as was the case with the set of three documentary and pseudo-documentary films anchored by the 79-minute feature You Can’t Kill Meme.

First in the grouping was the 9-minute “The Truth About Hastings.” Written and directed by Dan Schneidkraut, it’s a wry satirical take on conspiracy theory and the secret symbolism underlying a nice old lady’s 93rd birthday in the town of Hastings, Nebraska. (Or, at least, I take it as satire of conspiracy theory; given the way the film develops, you could view it more seriously.) A voice-over (courtesy Amanda Day) lays out ‘coincidences’ and resonances of secret meanings underlying events, based on “firsthand survivor testimony.” There’s a good attempt at capturing the paranoiac feel of the X-Files, with big ideas about reality as a hologram, and it builds to a surprisingly psychedelic finale. It is a bit slow, and perhaps could be tightened a bit here and there, but has a strong approach.

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“Miss Mary Mack” is an 18-minute short horror film from American writer/director Tim True. Set in Seattle in May 2020, it follows sisters Sarah and Izzy (played by real-life sisters Sydney and Lexie Lovering), who are home alone as their father goes to visit their mother in hospital. Sarah, older and gothier, meddles with the occult and plays a joke on tween Izzy. But then Izzy starts to act a little odd, and it’s soon clear there was more going on than a simple joke. Unfortunately, after a slow build to get to this point, the film does little with its premise, ending when Sarah’s about to understand what’s happened. The acting here is good, but the visuals are drab; it’s one thing to try to tell a horror story without the traditional heavy atmosphere, it’s another to substitute nothing in its place. There are some interesting ideas here, and the use of the traditional clapping game that gives the film its title is strong, but ultimately nothing much comes of this story.

Bundled with the short at was The Last Thing Mary Saw, the feature film debut of writer-director Edoardo Vitaletti. It’s a period horror story set in rural New York state in 1843, among an isolated religious community in the town of Southold. It opens with a blinded young woman at a trial, then flashes back to give us the tale. The blinded woman is Mary (Stefanie Scott), the daughter of one of the leaders of the community; as her story starts she’s in love with the family’s maid, and forbidden romance has blossomed. And we see the forces of reaction squash it. Then Mary, with the help of a mysterious stranger (Rory Culkin), tries to find a way out for herself and her lover, and we see what consequences follow.

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“Noses On the Run” (“내 코가 석재”) is a 20-minute short film from Korea written and directed by Kim Boram. In the near future a woman with extreme chronic rhinitis is desperate for respite from her condition. Salvation seems at hand when she’s able to order a new nose online. But a mistake has been made, and there will be consequences. It’s a movie full of low-key oddity and a dramatic climax; it looks nice, and speaks to the nature of suffering from a chronic illness. It’s a bit slow to get to its protagonist’s main dramatic choice, but the set-up’s visually interesting enough that the movie works as a whole.

Bundled with the short was the feature film called The Slug (태어나길 잘했어, Tae-eu-na-gil Jal-hat-eo), also from Korea. Written and directed by Choi Jin-young, it’s a movie that interlaces past with present as a way of presenting one woman’s life. Chun-hee (Kang Jin-ah) lives alone in the house where she came to live in her teen years with her aunt and uncle and cousins. She makes money by peeling garlic for a nearby restaurant. Then one evening, after an encounter with a homeless woman, she’s struck by lightning. And begins to see her teen self (Park Hye-jin), touching off flashbacks to her youth — even as she meets and enters into a tenuous relationship with a new man in her life, Juh-wang (Hong Sang-pyo). And further change looms: the owner of the house where she lives wants to sell it.

Who those owners are and why they’re selling and what this means for Chun-hee are things revealed in the story as it unfolds. What is important to know is that Chun-hee suffers from a disease where she sweats excessively, thus leaving a trail like a slug. This, along with the death of her parents, led to neglect during her teens, whether from her family or teachers. The result of that is an adult life lacking drive or movement, a mental paralysis events force her to overcome.

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Directed by Giorgio Ferroni, Mill of the Stone Women (Il mulino delle donne di pietra) was released in 1960. The first colour Italian horror film, its striking hues would influence Mario Bava in 1964’s Blood and Black Lace, and through him the emerging giallo genre. Arrow Video’s restored the film to its full original lushness, and the Fantasia Film Festiva screened the restoration. I was fascinated by the film’s imagery and tone; Mill captures a colourful gothic sensibility that echoes early Hammer Studios productions, a classic movie gothic that implies a world in which all sorts of horrors and monsters may exist.

(The writing credit for the film involves its own bit of gothic misdirection. Ferroni was involved in reworking a script by Remigio Del Grosso, Ugo Liberatore, and Giorgio Stegani, and the onscreen credits claim the film was based on a tale by Pieter van Weigen in his book Flemish Tales. But in fact there is no writer named Pieter van Weigen, and no book by him named Flemish Tales. Early gothic novels often used the device of false attributions to some nonexistent source — look at Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto, which he originally claimed to be a medieval manuscript — and it’s amusing to see that game played here, a couple hundred years later in a different artform.)

Mill brings us an involved story set around the turn of the twentieth century. It follows a writer, Hans von Arnim (Pierre Brice), who travels to the well-known Mill of the Stone Women to write an article about the Mill’s pageant of lifelike statues, the stone women, put on display by the mysterious Professor Gregorius Wahl (Herbert A.E. Böhme). At the mill, Hans finds several mysteries, among them the professor’s beautiful daughter Elfie (Scilla Gabel) who is attended by her own live-in doctor, Loren Bohlem (Wolfgang Preiss). Hans is drawn to Elfie, and begins to uncover the secrets of the mill, putting himself in terrible danger.

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While it is somewhat of an American tradition to go broke in the month of December, I try my hardest to do it in October as well. You’d think at this point, my obsession with the strange and unusual would have nowhere left to turn. I mean, there are only so many dead-things-under-glass one girl can have, right?

According to the National Retail Federation, spending on Halloween-related items is expected to reach $10.14 billion in the weeks surrounding October 31, 2021; up from $8.05 billion in 2020 which was an all-time high. This doesn’t happen if places like Spirit Halloween keep cranking out the same plastics skulls year after year. And here in lies the dilemma – there is a new batch of gothic splendor every October. What is a goth girl to do when faced with news like this?

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“Death and the Winemaker” (“Le Vigneron et la Mort”) is a 19-minute French-language animated film from Switzerland written and directed by Victor Jaquier. It’s a folkloric tale about a winemaker (voiced by Kacey Mottet Klein) in a Renaissancelike land who tries to win the heart of a noble young lady (Marie-Claire Dubois) by crafting the best wine in the world. But things take a turn when Death (Virginie Meisterhans) is drawn to the perfection of the winemaker’s creation. The story’s a nice rich tale of unwanted consequences, but what makes it work are the 2D visuals. The film recalls classic Disney movies in its designs, but is darker and naratively much richer. The castle in which the beautiful maiden dwells with her tyrannical father is detailed and charming, the winemaker’s town is intricate and gothic, the characters are cartoony and evocative. It’s good work for all ages.

The feature film it was bundled with was the movie I’d been most eagerly looking forward to at Fantasia, and it did not disappoint. The Spine of Night, written and directed by the team of Morgan Galen King and Philip Gelatt, is billed as a feature-length animated sword-and-sorcery film for adults in the vein of the Heavy Metal movie. And it very much is that. It’s more serious than Heavy Metal in many ways, but the violence and cosmic scope is if anything even greater.

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“A Tale Best Forgotten” is a five-minute film conceived and directed by Sweden’s Tomas Stark, based on a poem by Helen Adam. The text’s set to music, and sung over a long take in which the camera tilts back and forth to bring out the story; you can read the original here. It’s difficult to find detailed credits for the film, but it looks like Sebastian Bergström composed the tune to which Adam’s murder ballad is set, though I can’t find who does the singing. In any event, the evocative lyrics are given a fine cinematic accompaniment, as the images of the house and river create a lovely brooding atmosphere. I note that the first line of the poem, which specifies a certain mythic meaning to the ‘dog-headed man,’ is dropped; without it the film finds its own meanings for things, creating a more fairy-tale feel. In all it’s extremely strong work that displays a powerful visual imagination.

Bundled with the short was one of the movies I was most looking forward to at Fantasia 2021, Hellbender (or, as it’s sometimes written, H6llb6nd6r). It’s the sixth feature film from the Adams family: John Adams, his wife Toby Poser, and their teen daughters Zelda and Lulu. They make films as a collective — no studio backing, just their own resources, with locals and friends as actors. Different family members handle different tasks as strikes their fancy, with Poser usually the main writer, John Adams interested in sound, and Zelda Adams interested in cinematography and camerawork. I saw their previous movie The Deeper You Dig at Fantasia 2019, and enjoyed it; I was eager to see the follow-up. And while I liked The Deeper You Dig, I think Hellbender is a major step forward.

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Hercules and the Captive Women (Italy/France, 1961)

The Steve Reeves Hercules (Italy, 1958) was a big hit on both sides of the Atlantic, proving there was a market for shirtless strongman movies in drive-in movie theaters across America. The Italian movie industry obliged by churning out reams of low-budget sword-and-sandal “peplum” films, many of which had heroes named Goliath or Maciste in their original forms. When they were dubbed into English, for name-recognition purposes most of these strongmen were renamed Hercules, giving us a bewildering array of Hercules and the… movies from 1960 through 1965, when they were abruptly replaced by the so-called Spaghetti Westerns. Not many of these slammed-out Herc films are worth spending 80 minutes on today, but a few of them hold up and are worth a look. Here, for your delectation and delight, are three very different examples.

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